Re: AUT: Re: Immeasurable value

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm still wondering how this all relates to the fictitious capital debate that Loren Goldner and others have engaged in (I raised this once before). According to Loren's argument, fictitious capital is fictitious because it loses its connection with actual value. Now if value is immeasurable, how can anyone know that?
Tahir

>>> hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/30/04 03:59PM >>>
On Sun, 28 Mar 2004, Tom Messmer wrote:

> Harry,
> Thanks, your comment and the second half of that article actually
> clears it up a bit. I was taken aback by the fact that he seems to be
> introducing some sort of diffuse, fuzzy ubervalue

It's still LABOR value. For all his revisionism, Toni is still
very wedded to the centrality of labor in human activity. Of course, by
now everything is labor so his break with Marx is not from labor as the
source of value, but from the measurability of labor - and in the process
he loses all ability to say anything quantitatively useful.


> created by their
> every activity which seems to travel along with the Multitude wherever
> it roams, its roaming now "heroic" rather  than probably just really
> crappy for them.

If the Multitude is just the working class writ large, creating yet
harnessed in all its acts, then its roaming must be both crappy and
heroic, exploited (tho this concept becomes indeterminate if you can't
measure value) yet always struggling to free itself. What's missing in
all this is any analysis of actual escape, of any exodus that has actually
crossed the Red Sea and is doing something different. Which is why, for
me, dispite its perceptiveness about capitalist tendencies toward moving
beyond national forms of self-organization, Empire smacks of orthodoxy
and critical theory in new clothes.

H.

>
> All in all though, I did enjoy Empire, its a lively and thought
> provoking read.
> Tom
>
> On Mar 28, 2004, at 3:35 AM, Harry M. Cleaver wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 27 Mar 2004, Eubulides wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Tom Messmer" <messmer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Does anyone have any insight into the section in Empire 4.1 on
> >> "Immeasurability"?  They write:
> >>
> >>  "Even if in postmodern capitalism there is
> >> no longer a fixed scale that measures value, value nonetheless is
> >> still
> >> powerful and ubiquitous....In Empire, the construction of value takes
> >> place
> >> beyond measure."
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> "...outside measure refers to the impossibility of power's
> >> calculating and
> >> ordering production at a global level,  beyond measure refers to the
> >> vitality
> >> of the productive context, the expression of labor as desire, and its
> >> capacities to constitute the biopolitical fabric of Empre from below."
> >>
> >> This entire chapter seems extremely fishy to me, really unclear and
> >> vaguely religious sounding. Can anyone clarify this section, or is it
> >> as
> >> silly as I think it is?
> >>
> >> Tom
> >>
> >> =====================
> >>
> >> It has been quite a while since I perused E but I think it has to do
> >> with
> >> a problem pointed out by David Ricardo:
> >>
> >> http://home.manhattan.edu/~fiona.maclachlan//research/Ricardo.htm
> >>
> > I don't think that's Toni's problem, at least I've never seen any
> > indication of such. I think his problem derives from his conviction
> > that
> > the total subordination of life to capital makes it impossible to
> > differentiate between labor time and other time - all time becomes
> > labor
> > time - and if you can't differentiate you can't measure a distinct
> > time of
> > labor/value. The corrolary is that struggle is everywhere and also
> > immeasurable, thus the second paragraph quoted above. But struggle is
> > just
> > the creative content of living labor, thus a kind of neo-orthodox
> > vision
> > of revolution as living labor taking over. This vision pre-dates Empire
> > and his appropriation of Deleuze & Guattari, Foucault and
> > "biopolitics".
> > See:
> > http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/offenegri.html
> > H.
> >
> >
> >
> > .......................................................................
> > .....
> > Snail-mail:
> > Harry Cleaver
> > University of Texas at Austin
> > Department of Economics
> > BRB 1.116
> > 1 University Station, C3100
> > Austin, Texas 78712-0301  USA
> >
> > Phone Numbers:
> > (hm)  (512) 442-5036
> > (off) (512) 475-8535
> > Fax:(512) 471-3510
> >
> > E-mail:
> > hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Cleaver homepage:
> > http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/index.html
> >
> > Chiapas95 homepage:
> > http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
> > .......................................................................
> > .....
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> >
> >
> ----
> The money powers preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires
> against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy,
> more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It
> denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw
> light upon its crimes. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of
> corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the
> country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the
> prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of
> a few, and the Republic is destroyed.
>
> Abraham Lincoln
>
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>

............................................................................
Snail-mail:
Harry Cleaver
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Economics
BRB 1.116
1 University Station, C3100
Austin, Texas 78712-0301  USA

Phone Numbers:
(hm)  (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 475-8535
Fax:(512) 471-3510

E-mail:
hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/index.html

Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
............................................................................




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